


nutcracker suite

by brophigenia



Category: The Originals (TV), The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Background Nongraphic Character Death (Canon), Crown Princess Caroline, Epistolary, F/M, Fairytale elements, King Klaus, Liz and Caroline don't understand each other, Misunderstandings?, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Pining, Presents, Prince Klaus, Queen Caroline - Freeform, Sort-Of?, Waltzing, but they admire each other, sort of historical?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-23 09:45:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13187490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brophigenia/pseuds/brophigenia
Summary: It had arrived as an early present from an anonymous gifter, accompanied only by a tag that readfor Carolinein elegant script on thick cardstock.





	1. Waltz of the Flowers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theoriginalcheeesecake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theoriginalcheeesecake/gifts).



> Hey hey my giftee, it's me, the gifter who wrote you a bunch of weird stuff about balls and pining and dresses! I really hope you like it, because I literally don't know what this is. I apologize in advance for the self-indulgent mess you're about to read. I hope you like balls?

Caroline caught her own reflection in the towering glass doors leading out to the terrace from the ballroom and paused, a little struck with something not at all like vanity and just like it, too, at the sight of herself. Hair shining golden, drawn to one side. Tiara sparkling at her brow. And her  _ gown.  _

It had arrived as an early present from an anonymous gifter, accompanied only by a tag that read  _ for Caroline  _ in elegant script on thick cardstock. 

She’d bristled at the familiarity, at the use of her first name, until she’d opened the box and seen the thing. 

Pale blue, like a springtime sky, and bedecked in the most lifelike silk flowers she’d ever seen in her entire life.  _ Ethereal,  _ like she was the Faerie Queen in any of her favorite stories. 

It had fit perfectly, too. 

Her mother had all but been apoplectic and tried to force her to wear the gown she’d had commissioned, high-necked and pink and  _ boring  _ and exactly like Elena had worn two months ago for  _ her  _ eighteenth birthday ball. 

Happily though, Caroline had not reached her eighteenth year without learning how to throw legendary tantrums, the gale force of which were always aimed at her mother, the Queen. Screaming, stomping, thrown vases— the works. The commissioned gown had been thusly set aside for her to wear to the following morning’s ladies’ brunch and the dreamlike mass of chiffon and silk that was the anonymous present had been hung triumphantly in her wardrobe, waiting for the night of the ball.

Lexi had sighed over the whole thing, her governess as unimpressed with her histrionics as ever. “Caroline, I wish you’d act like a future queen and not like a three-year-old denied extra dessert,” she’d murmured, looking up from one of her thick history books when Caroline had flounced happily back into her chambers after the loud fight she’d had with her mother in the Great Hall. 

“Lexi, you and I both know that as long as my mother gets her way, Elena or Bonnie will be the next queen. She’ll never trust me with the kingdom. She’ll die in twenty years and Mr. Saltzman will call us all into his office and say that she left the kingdom to her  _ dog  _ before he’ll say she left it to  _ me _ .” Caroline tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice. She forced a lighthearted laugh instead. “Oh, besides, can you imagine  _ me  _ as a queen? I’d much rather plan parties and drink champagne into my old age!”

The lies fell as flat as they always did, and Lexi winced but didn’t comment, as kind as she ever was. 

Now, staring at herself in the glass, she blinked, trying to dispel the thought that she looked nothing like the portrait of her mother hanging in the Great Hall, painted on her coronation day, strong and serious and straight-shouldered like a young oak tree where Caroline was a creature of spun sugar and silliness. 

The ball was magnificent, of course. Everyone who was anyone had responded to the invitations her mother had circulated; the ballroom was a dizzying whirl of silk and velvet skirts and a forest of men both strange and familiar, all around like tall statues she had to crane her neck to look in the face. 

She’d had three flutes of champagne and was trying to combat her own lightheadedness. She didn’t look like herself, in the glass. She didn’t look  _ real,  _ wide-eyed and  _ apart  _ from everyone else. 

She’d been looking forward to the ball for months, had planned the whole thing down to the type of elaborate fold that each napkin was sculpted into, nestled on gold-rimmed plates on the long dining table at the far side of the room. Now she watched the peerage laugh and dance all around her and felt utterly, completely,  _ alone.  _

Her mother stood tall at the head of the room, surveying the guests proudly, and Caroline turned away from her direction before her mother’s always-watchful eyes fell upon her face and she would be subjected to a round of hissed admonishments that she needed to smile more, seem more grateful for the excess of splendor around her rather than frowning at her own reflection like a self-absorbed brat. 

The musicians, the best that could be found within 500 miles, a gift sent from her father, who was far away in a leisurely castle by the sea with his  _ paramour,  _ Steven, struck up a waltz. One of her favorites from girlhood, one that absolutely matched the tone of the evening and the beautiful snowflakes falling in an early winter flurry outside. 

She made to take a step forward into the fray of dancers but stopped abruptly when she realized that the younger Lord Salvatore had taken Elena’s arm and that Bonnie was standing up with Duke Lockwood; she knew no one else well enough to have a turn about the floor with them comfortably, and for the millionth time in her eighteen years, Caroline Forbes felt out of place. 

She’d just resolved to sneak off into one of the adjoining drawing rooms for a bracing glass of scotch when a gloved hand took her clothed elbow; the first thing she noticed, besides the light-as-a-feather grip, was the  _ heat _ of that hand, even through two layers of cloth. “May I have the honor, Love?” 

The voice was… compelling, to say the least, even before she’d craned back her head to look her captor in the face. 

The owner of the voice was just as compelling as he sounded, and Caroline kept with her an impression of daring blue eyes and a soft mouth curled in a sharp grin before she was being whirled out onto the middle of the marble parquet floor. 

_ Prince Klaus, third son of the late King Mikael of the North.  _

She’d seen him once before, from a distance— last summer, at the diplomatic summit her mother had dragged her to. The second day of negotiations had ended with Caroline in tears, trying to get her mother to understand that she didn’t  _ mean  _ to fall asleep during council, it was only that Mr. Saltzman was speaking in monotone on tax revenues and the room was so warm and the wine was so  _ red.  _ Elizabeth had banished her daughter to whatever frivolities could keep her away from the business at hand, and Caroline had spent the next four days alternately moping and stomping about the lovely gardens surrounding the place. Prince Klaus had stood at his eldest brothers’ sides on the last day, dashing in dark blue; he’d whispered something in his next-oldest brother’s ear that made him break his solemnity and laugh aloud and made their eldest brother glare reproachfully at them both. 

His eyes had danced merrily then, too, and had caught hers the moment after his joke, burning intensely bright for the few seconds she allowed the eye contact before turning away, throat beginning to flush. 

Now she was sure she was bright red from hairline to neckline, unable to speak under the weight of those eyes but thankfully moving through the steps of the dance without fail. She was good at  _ some  _ parts of being crown princess, after all, if not so brilliant at others. 

“You look lovely tonight,” Prince Klaus said, breaking the ice if not putting a damper on the heat between them. “If not a little lonesome. Were your southerner lords unable to come to agreement as to who would have your hand for this round?” 

She pursed her lips, disliking his words and what they implied even if she liked the way his hands felt, strong and still so startlingly  _ warm,  _ as they gripped her waist to lift her into the air as they turned. She was pleased to see that neither Lord Salvatore nor Duke Lockwood lifted their dance partners so high as she herself was lifted, and that none of the other dancing pairs around the room were so swift-footed as to be able to spin two full times before the three-step beat restarted on the first position of the figure. 

She resolved just not to respond to the Prince. If she ignored him and his cajolingly rude words and the way he always seemed to be on the verge of laughter, she wouldn’t risk losing her temper and saying something that would be surely overheard by one of the guests and then reported back to her mother. 

“Ah,  _ Silence _ !” Prince Klaus very nearly sang the words, growing more amused by the second; she gritted her teeth and resisted the urge to trod on his toes. Something about him made her  _ furious  _ even as she was struck by the high definition of his cheekbones and the way his face unshaven but no less regal for it. None of the young genteel men of her social circle had facial hair. “That most teasing of companions! Tell me, do you save all of your words for when you’re having a go about with Her Royal Majesty, or have I done something to displease you?” 

The heat flared up in her cheeks, renewed, and she wondered if the dance would ever end-- surely they’d been locked in this battle for half an hour already! 

“I don’t know  _ what  _ you think you know--” she began, trying to keep the anger from her tone, trying to seem  _ light and polite,  _ as her mother and Lexi and  _ literally everyone  _ had been preaching to her for the last eighteen years of her life, and was cut off by his bark of a laugh, springing from his open, grinning mouth. And  _ what  _ a mouth, with lips soft-looking and full like a girl’s and a full complement of perfectly white, perfectly straight, teeth. 

“Love, it isn’t what  _ I  _ think, it’s what the whole realm knows,” he all but purred, drawing her so close that his thighs brushed the front of her gown. They were hot, too-- his entire body was  _ scorching,  _ and she felt that her body was traitorously affected by it. 

“As I was  _ trying  _ to say,” she hissed, as the last strains of the waltz died down and she was able to take a sharp step  _ back  _ and  _ away  _ from Prince Klaus and his ridiculous  _ everything  _ and his  _ implications,  _ “I don’t know what a  _ third son _ thinks he knows about the relationship between a ruler and their heir, but I’ll  _ thank  _ you never to speak to me again.” She finished coldly, raising her chin to look down her nose at him, eyes narrowing. 

Around them, partygoers glancing in her direction were struck by how like the queen Crown Princess Caroline appeared in that moment. Prince Klaus only bared his teeth in a savage sort of grin that made her feel viciously triumphant, knowing she’d hit a nerve, before he stepped closer than decency allowed to seize her hand and drag it up to his mouth, instead of bowing down to waist-level like any other gentleman might. It reminded her of a line in one of her storybooks-- in  _ Bluebeard _ . The line came to her suddenly as she looked up into his eyes, smarting and sparking like hot coals.  _ When we walked together he held my hand unnaturally high, at the level of his chest, as no man had done before. In this way he made his claim.  _

“So I take it you didn’t like your early birthday present, then? The gift of a  _ third son. _ ” He murmured like a wild animal might snarl, teeth unyielding behind that soft-looking mouth pressed to the points of her bare knuckles. She wished she’d worn gloves. 

Before she could answer, he tore himself away from her and strode across the room, towards where his brothers waited by the doors, furious in the tremble of his shoulders. She’d struck deeper than a nerve, with her angry retort. She’d hit bone, and almost regretted it, standing there in her fairy queen birthday dress that felt heavier, more deliberate, now that she knew who had given it to her. 

When it had been a nameless gift it had been almost like a wish granted by a fairy godmother; now, knowing that (for whatever reason) Klaus Mikaelson had sent it to her made the swish of its skirts louder, the sensuous dip of its neckline more calculated, its very composition endlessly more  _ confusing.  _

Why had he sent it? Why had he infuriated her so? 

_ Caroline,  _ he’d written on the tag with those hot hands, and she clenched her fists into her skirts, resisting the urge to shout with her frustration. The chill that had fallen over her when she’d spoken to him had passed, leaving her hot with anger and embarrassment. 

She felt like a child. 

She felt like a  _ woman,  _ too big for her own skin.

The players struck up another tune, and she only resisted jumping when she felt Duke Lockwood’s hand touch her elbow by the skin of her teeth, caught in thoughts of blue eyes and straight shoulders and  _ third sons.  _


	2. Interlude I: Letters Never Sent

_Caroline,_

_I regret the way our last -first- interaction went. This is unusual, because I do not, as a rule, find myself in the habit of regretting anything, much less a bit of talk in a ballroom._

_I sent you the gown because I admire you greatly, and wanted, selfishly, not just to please you but to see you in something that I felt would do your beauty justice. You are the most enchanting creature I have yet beheld, though I am sure you hear such silver-tongued compliments every day, from some lord or another._

_In truth, I have a confession: last summer’s diplomatic meeting saw us both in the same place, and where you believe our first real encounter to be on your eighteenth birthday, I confess that you caught my eye before then. You stood on a balcony with your mother, Her Majesty; you were weeping but also shouting, and I thought to myself that I had never seen someone so alight with emotion._

_The culture of your kingdom is not at all like that of my own: in the North, we -that is, my late father the king, and my eldest brother, the king- value reason and stoicism above all things. Such is the natural order when you live in a harsh climate as we do. This is why your summery kingdom caught my eye. This is why you caught my eye._

_I thought perhaps that the way to catch your notice was to jab at you, to infuriate you. In part, I wanted to see your anger again, as I can only compare that sight to a blazing summer sun the like of which I have only heard of. I apologize for this impulse, which makes me seem more my father’s son than I ever aspire to be._

_From what I know of you, I think that perhaps we have more in common than you might think. We are both the often-slighted offspring of neglectful fathers and mothers who cannot love us in the way we wish to be loved, and yet who also cannot leave us. My parents have both died, and yet they still plague both my waking hours and my nights._

_All of this to say, I apologize for having offended you._

_Klaus Mikaelson, Duke of Orleans Estate_

“Brother? Come, Finn calls for us. News from the south,” Elijah says, from the door of his study. Klaus looks up, nods sharply.

“Shall I call for the valet to postmark that?” Elijah asks, gesturing towards the letter in his hand with his elegant hands. If Klaus hadn’t seen it personally, he’d not believe those hands capable of violence.

He grins ruefully, tossing the missive into the roaring fireplace on his way to his brother’s side, barely sparing a glance to make sure that it burns entirely before leading the way down the hall.

“No, thank you, Elijah.” News from the south that requires their immediate attention means battle, and Klaus prefers to keep his head clear when there is warmaking to be done. 


	3. Waltz of the Snowflakes

There are approximately seventy three things that Caroline would rather be doing tonight, and she lists them in her head as she hurriedly scrubs at her limbs, folded up in the hip bath one of the chambermaids had brought. Her meeting with the head of the Farmers Guild had run longer than expected, so instead of a leisurely soak in the sunken tub she gets lukewarm water and possibly a broken nose from smacking her own knee into her face as she tries to get at her feet.

She’d _love_ to stay in her rooms, soak for about an hour in a tub chock full of spearmint and peppermint sprigs and vanilla oil, then get out and get a head start on tomorrow’s paperwork.

Honestly, she’d love just about anything except going to the ball.

It’s the first one since their victory in the final battle of the war— the first one since her mother died. The first one since she’d become queen, coronated in a shamefully small ceremony directly after her mother’s sudden death on the battlefield.

Caroline will stand before a thousand or so people tonight as Queen of the Southern Kingdom, expected to make light of everything and be perfectly put-together, like she hadn’t woken up this morning at 4 a.m. to meet with her Council and then to a dozen other appointments; she is exhausted just at the thought of spending the night dancing and making small talk.

She used to be good at small talk. She used to be good at parties, at floating around the dance floor and smiling and flirting.

Now she feels vaguely impatient just at the thought, aggravated at the idea of having to talk about the size of the room or the number of couples when there are refugees starving in tent villages on the outskirts of the kingdom, rebuilding to be done. She feels weary at the thought of having to dance when all she’d like to do is lay down and rest her aching body. She’s so sore from being so erect all day, making such an effort to keep her back straight. Her neck hurts from the weight of the crown (her mother’s crown.)

There’s a metaphor lurking somewhere in that statement.

She doesn’t call any of her ladies to come dress her hair— they’ll insist on taking a long time, being more elaborate than is strictly necessary in arranging her hair into whorls and plaits. Even her _scalp_ is tired, and practically mutinies at the prospect of the sharp-ended jeweled pins that Nadia would no doubt twist into her head at the first available opportunity.

She brushes it and pulls half of it back, clasps it in place with a comb she’d inherited from her mother.

“Nadia? Lexi?” She calls, distracted, remembering suddenly that she’d meant to look that missive from the Blacksmith’s Guild over again. “What am I wearing tonight?”

How life changes, a small part of her whispers: four years ago she’d stood in this very room and announced herself unfit to rule. _Drinking champagne and dancing_ , she’d declared as her life’s ambitions. She’d obsessed over every detail of every ball, had planned her hairstyles down to the very last strand, had scouts scouring every foreign trader’s stall in the marketplace for anything new and _exciting_ to be seen in before anyone else.

Her eighteen year old self would’ve positively _swooned_ at the thought of not having a dress picked out until minutes before the event, but Caroline is twenty two and a queen and she’s barely got enough time to sleep and eat, much less plan parties and acquire ballgowns.

“My lady,” Lexi’s voice says, the edges of her words curled enough that she’s sure, if she looked up, she’d see a smile on her Head of Household’s face.

“Lexi?” She responds absently, eyes skimming over the aforementioned document ( _thusly we, the Guild of Southern Blacksmiths, do so propose that there be a temporary change in the length of official royal standards for those young persons undertaking apprenticeship for a period not to exceed five years…_ ) waiting for Lexi to continue.

When there is nothing more said, Caroline tears her weary eyes away from the Blacksmiths to look up.

Lexi’s eyebrows are quirked and she’s _grinning_ in a way that’s much too saucy for a lady of such a dignified post and pedigree, a giant white box balanced in her arms.

“This came for you. I looked in it to see if there was anything dangerous, like cobras or scorpions or bedbugs,” Lexi all but chortles, eyes dancing madly, and Caroline rolls her eyes even as she continues. “None of that, so here!”

The box is lighter than Caroline expects, from its size.

The box is light, and tied neatly with black twine.

The dress inside of the box is folded neatly, and the material is so heavy that it doesn’t hold any wrinkles when she pulls it out, holds it in front of her to inspect it.

It looks like the night sky— dark blue and high necked and sleeveless, skirt pleated gracefully and bedecked in silver all over. It’s a dress fit for a goddess, much less a queen, and Caroline is astonished even as the squashed, girlish parts of her are infinitely pleased at how _beautiful_ the thing is. It’s startling— she’d never have picked the dress for herself, and yet now she cannot picture herself facing her Court in anything else.

“Lexi, what,” she murmurs, vague and surprised as she flicks her eyes up, and Lexi stoops to pick up a slim card that had fluttered to the ground, proffering it to her and trying to suppress her own delight.

 _To Caroline_ , the card reads, in neat script. Script that matches that of the card hidden in the first pages of the pale blue leatherbound journal her mother had given her the morning after her eighteenth birthday and inscribed _for all of your important thoughts_ on the beginning endpapers.

She’s seen the handwriting before, since then, of course— on official agreements and letters and treaties and proposals, all from the Northern Kingdom. It’s an even, tempered, artistic hand that belongs to Klaus Mikaelson, Hand of the Northern King.

She flushes red, thinks of her eighteenth birthday and the gown she’d worn then, another milestone marked in a ballroom and spent wearing a dress that Klaus Mikaelson had chosen for her.

“Well,” she says briskly, shaking herself from her reverie and straightening her shoulders. “I’ll have to get dressed.”

The gown fits perfectly; it’s a fact that makes her flush even deeper, wondering at how he’d gotten hold of her measurements, or if he’d been able to look at her and approximate the circumference of all of her form with ease. How close had he been looking, when they’d seen each other over the years? His eyes were always alight, always burning, or so she had thought— maybe they were only ever burning when turned upon _her_.

Lexi sets her crown upon her head and Caroline steels herself as she’s striding down the halls to the top of the staircase that opens to the ballroom.

There, at the top, she pauses to survey her dominion for the evening. Hundreds of guests, hundreds of skirts whirling and people laughing and murmuring, a cacophony of sound below the fine music being played.

And, there— in a knot of dark colors against the gaiety of pinks and blues and whites, the Northerners. The Mikaelsons. Elijah, Kol, Rebekah, Freya… and Klaus, standing tall, _grinning_.

The herald announces her and she walks down the stairs, head held high against the reflex to watch her step, make sure she doesn’t trip over her sweeping skirts.

She greets dozens of lords and ladies, smiles politely and thanks them for coming, compliments their attire, inquires after their families. She dances with Duke So-and-so, Lord Whatshisname, the Earl of She’s-Too-Tired-To-Care.

...And all the while, she can feel Klaus Mikaelson’s eyes on her. Burning the back of her neck. The Northerners stay clustered at the end of the ballroom, save for Rebekah, who sails elegantly through each dance in her gown of daring scarlet and arched her brows wickedly when she inclined her head in a bow to acknowledge Caroline’s presence earlier

Finally, as the night winds down and she thinks that Klaus will stay away from her for the whole ball, he appears like some stately vision before her.

“Your Majesty, if I may,” he says, gracious as you please, bowing so low that she’s flustered by it.

“You may,” she hears her own voice say, faraway and high, girlish, _charmed_. Because she is. Charmed, that is, if however unwillingly.

His hand is still as hot as a brand when it envelops hers, and she can barely stand to look at him as he leads her out to the center of the dancers.

The intervening years have not made him any less of an accomplished dancer, and she sails as high through the air on each turn as she did that night so long ago.

“You look lovely,” he offers, mildly, even as his eyes dance madly, and she doesn’t know what is worse— him acting as if he didn’t send the dress, or him acknowledging he _did_.

“I want to know why you sent it,” she blurts out, years of instruction on light conversation and courtesy absolutely flying out of the window to their death on the cobblestones below. And she is _mortified_ , but at least she’s taken him aback as well, though he looks _far_ more pleased by it, grin unfurling into something wider, more wolfish.

“This gown, or the other?” He asks, and even if she weren’t looking straight at him she’d be able to hear his amusement, hear his grin.

“Either! Both!” She hisses, overcome, furious and pleased and unfathomable even to herself.

“I first saw you on a balcony overlooking a garden,” he says, turning them smoothly as he speaks, “and you seemed so natural against the backdrop of flowers that I thought you quite the bloom yourself— wild and lovely and full of life.” He says this as if it’s an answer, an explanation as to why he’d first sent her a gown decked in silken flowers, a gown so beautiful it had seemed not of this world. A gown still kept in the back of her wardrobe. A gown that sometimes her fingers brush while she’s looking for some frippery or another. A gown that still makes her flush scarlet with just the slightest touch to its weightless chiffon and silk.

His words make it worse, imagining him imagining _her_ in such a fanciful way that seems so at odds to his public persona, the straight-backed white-toothed predator come from the snowy north to carry off your women and your gold.

“And… this one?” She asks, faintly, not sure she wants to hear more but sure that she doesn’t want to _not_.

His eyes darken and his voice drops lower and he says gravely, “in my dreams, you are clothed in starlight,” before he steps sharply back, the dance ended, the music stopped. She’s bereft, suddenly, in the absence of his furnace-like warmth, and watching him bow to kiss her knuckles before he strides away makes her dizzy.

“Damn it,” she whispers, once she’d found the safety of her chambers, pressing her back to the ornate door and rubbing her fingers over the spot that he’d kissed, catching her reflection in the glass windowpane, distorted and _young_.

She sighs, thinks _clothed in starlight_ , and leaves her dress tossed over a chair, crawling into bed.

There is an important meeting with the Blacksmiths’ Guild in the morning, after all. 


	4. Interlude II: Letters Never to Be Received

_Klaus—_

_The only reason I’m writing this is because it’s two in the morning and I’m out of ideas to make myself feel better._

_You infuriate me. You say all of these things and your eyes are so kind and your hands scorch me, your touch scorches me— I hate you half of the time and then you go and do something ridiculous like send the North’s armies for me, all for me, like that’s something a new king can do, you’re so ridiculous and I can’t stop thinking about you._

_I don’t know if I want to have you locked up in a dungeon or if I want to have you locked up in my rooms and it is physically making me ill._

_Please just. Do something._

_—Caroline_

She crumples the letter and the betraying words on it, flings it across the room and pauses to take another swig of bourbon before she gets up to tear it to shreds and then burn each of them individually, making sure they won’t ever be found. God, she’s supposed to be better than this— Klaus is _not_ a suitable— whatever. He’s literally just not suitable for any occupation except being ridiculous and probably killing people. She’s heard the stories like everyone else has, about the way he and his brothers (but mostly he) carry on during a battle. Throats ripped out with teeth and blood everywhere and something about ritualistic cannibalism, just.

_Honestly_.

The Wolf King is _not_ a respectable option for someone to even play a game of croquet with, and here she sits, drunkenly writing him love letters like some bodice-ripper _harlot_.

Her mother would be so _ashamed_ of her, she thinks to herself. But then, she decides, knocking back another cringing swig, Elizabeth Forbes was _usually_ ashamed of her daughter.

She straightens, looks around the room that used to belong to her mother and now is hers, and then drags the coverlet off of her huge inherited bed and curls up with it on the divan in the corner, next to the window, so she can see the stars.

Lupus is unnaturally bright in the sky and she flushes, closes her eyes so she can’t see it anymore.

Sleep comes quickly, and brings with is confusing dreams of wolves and flowers and _Klaus Mikaelson_.


	5. Pas de Deux

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, my giftee: I'm sorry this is so weird, I'm sorry it's late, I literally am just sorry for all of it lol.

Twenty three. 

It had been a long year. 

Caroline felt  _ ancient _ , thirty years older than she actually was, like she should be celebrating her  _ fifty third  _ birthday, instead. She wondered at how her mother had done this alone; she wondered at how  _ she  _ would do this alone, and thought unwillingly of the North— of Klaus, who they now called  _ King Niklaus,  _ after the death of his eldest brother, King Finn. He had his brothers and sisters to help him, but she wondered if that was  _ enough.  _

He’d sent letters, cordial things that barely belied any feeling— assuring her that he hoped to have good relations with the Southern Kingdom, and far more favorable and fair trade agreements between them.  _ Let the past die,  _ he’d written in his last letter,  _ and let us speak as equals.  _

It was more than his brother had done for Caroline, more than his father had done for Caroline’s mother. The Northerners did not pass their crowns to their daughters, as a rule, though Klaus had an older sister, his father’s firstborn, who was still living and had never, as far as she was aware, been offered the crown. 

His willingness to treat with her had taken her aback. 

His support in the recent conflict with the Western Kingdom had  _ floored _ her. 

She’d ridden into the clearing at the head of her army, as her mother had done before her, though she had never been very good with a sword. She’d been sitting tall upon her mother’s horse and surveying the Western soldiers that King John had sent. 

It had shocked her, at first, to hear the words that John Gilbert had sent with the head of his army. That she was too young and inexperienced to rule such a kingdom; that if she loved her people at all and wished not to see them fall to ruin, she would surrender her crown to him and allow their kingdoms to be merged. 

Shocked her, and then infuriated her— that a man like John Gilbert, who had inherited the throne after the suspicious death of Elena’s parents, a man who presumed to rule but did not even ride with his army, could accuse her of  _ lacking.  _

She’d worked her fingers to the bone, in the two years since she’d become Queen. She’d seen them through rebuilding after the end of the War, had made sure none of her people starved that first terrible winter. She had done  _ everything,  _ and she had done it by herself. 

Staring down the Western Army, she’d said  _ I will not  _ and known, for the first time, that her mother had been right to leave her the crown, and not Elena, now Lady Salvatore, sitting on her Council, or Bonnie, now the head of their Teachers’ Guild. 

She was her mother’s daughter after all, and would not be moved, even though the Western Army was  _ so  _ much larger than her own. She would rather the kingdom  _ burn  _ than have it remembered that she had surrendered, and the thought should have scared her but  _ didn’t.  _

That was when scouts from both her army and the West’s had come running, shouting about troops on the horizon. 

And so there had been—  _ Northern  _ troops, and her heart had skipped in her chest at the sight of a tall figure on horseback at the forefront, thinking that surely it would be Klaus. 

As they had gotten closer she’d been disappointed to see it was not Klaus but his younger brother, instead, the brother who resembled a jackal, grinning and wicked. Kol Mikaelson, flanked by standard-bearers flying the Northern flag, a white wolf on a scarlet background. 

“Your Royal Majesty, my brother the king sends his sincerest regards and apologizes that he was not able to come himself,” Prince Kol had shouted merrily, even as his troops fell into line beside of Caroline’s, “and asks me to assure you that as long as he lives, there will be no ruler in the South but one named Forbes!” 

That had ended the conflict, thankfully, without bloodshed— King John could not hope to war with both the North  _ and  _ the South. 

And now here she found herself, on the eve of her twenty-third birthday, traitorously hoping that there would be a large box anonymously delivered to her rooms before it was time to go down to the ball being thrown for her birthday. 

She’d been more involved in the planning of this one— had felt less disconnected and solemn, and more like some medium between herself as she had been at eighteen, unburdened, and herself, the queen. 

The gown she’d picked for the evening hung at the far wall, and she considered it from her place settled at the vanity, watching it from the mirror as Nadia twisted her hair into something suitable for a queen on her birthday. 

“Ouch! God!” She winced, jerking, for the millionth time since she’d sat down. Nadia clucked her tongue and said nothing, and Caroline muttered dire threats she’d never actually go through with. Nadia knew this, and went on with her work, eyebrows furrowed critically as she made sure each and every strand was properly attended to. 

Caroline had given up hope that there would be any  _ surprises _ and was just about to let Nadia lace her into the gown she’d been surveying earlier, a perfectly lovely dress made out of aubergine silk from the Eastern Kingdom, when there was a courteous knock at the door. 

Nadia crossed the room to answer it at a far more leisurely pace than Caroline wished her to take, but then, Nadia Petrova was  _ never _ in a hurry. It was an elegant quality in a lady, Caroline knew, and when she was younger she’d been so jealous of her lady-in-waiting’s stately, leonine presence, but now it just drove her half out of her mind. 

“St. John, I will not let you in the Queen’s chamber. She is not dressed for company.” Nadia stated, and in her tall heels she towered over Enzo, who grinned up at her like a cat might hiss at a Doberman. Normally the tension between her lady-in-waiting and her valet was just about the most entertaining thing that Caroline had ever seen, but she was on edge enough as it was. 

“Nadia, please!” She snapped, drawing her robe tight around herself as if that would stop Enzo’s smirky little comments, stepping up to her shoulder. “What do you want, Enzo?” 

“Well, darling,” Enzo drew out, so inappropriate it was probably breaking some kind of law, “a box was passed to me from one of the Northern princes—“ he paused for effect, and chuckled when she clenched her fingers to resist reaching out to strangle him. “The youngest, Henrik, I believe… he said the package was to be given  _ directly to Queen Caroline  _ and that I was to say nothing of where it came from. Dramatic, that boy is, though with all those brothers and sisters running about glaring and making speeches and eating the still-beating hearts out of the chests of their enemies—“

“They do  _ not  _ do that!” Caroline shrieked, rolling her eyes as Enzo theatrically quoted one of the most popular old rumors about the Mikaelson family. 

“I don’t know how he  _ wouldn’t  _ have come up as dramatic as they come. At any rate, Your Exalted Royal Majesty, here.” 

The box was just like the other two had been, fine white cardboard tied in fine twine, and when she opened it she let out a little murmur or surprised awe, pulling it immediately out so she could survey it from neckline to hemline. 

Silver, this time, with panels of sheer net so fine that it would look like her bare skin in the candlelight, with long sleeves of netting dotted with silver flower petals that scattered across the whole of the bodice and half the skirt, leading to a motif of silver flora and fauna so finely rendered that the blooms looked alive. 

“My lady, the card,” Nadia murmured, glowing and smiling like the cat who ate the canary.  _ The Wolf King would be a good match for you, my love,  _ she’d murmured on more than one occasion as she brushed out Caroline’s hair after a bath, rubbing rosewater into its ends,  _ you could unite the kingdoms… bring about a new age…  _ and of course, Caroline had heard this proposed before, mostly by the Petrovas who sat in her Council and were some of the shrewdest political minds of the age. Katherine, Nadia’s mother, and Isobel, Katherine’s niece, had been two of her mother’s most trusted advisors. Nadia handed the aforementioned card to her, and though Caroline expected it only to read her own name, she was surprised to see written  _ To Caroline, From Klaus.  _

As they hurried to get her into the dress, Caroline mused over the other gifts she’d received lately, all from men who sought her hand in marriage and thought the way to get it was to send her exotic animals in cages and tastelessly gaudy jewelry, as if with the first to offer her a glimpse of her future as a married woman and the second to showcase how little they knew her. Looking at herself in the mirror, she thought to herself that, as with both of the other dresses he’d sent her, though she would never have chosen it for herself, the gown suited her in a way that made it clear it had been painstakingly designed with her in mind. 

_ In my dreams you are clothed in starlight,  _ she remembered him saying, and bit her lip as she raked her eyes over this newest dress which made her look as if she were clothed in the stars themselves. 

The ball itself was lovely, with thousands of her favorite lemoncakes stacked into a towering mountain at the side of the room and her favorite champagne being served in thousands of sparkling crystal flutes. The musicians played all of her favorite songs, beginning with the tunes of her childhood and progressing from there as she danced with half the Court, and all of her childhood friends. She even took a turn with Damon Salvatore, rolling her eyes even as she laughed helplessly at the terrible gossip he whispered in her ear. 

And yet, her heart was sinking further towards her feet, because Klaus was not there. 

She saw his family, dressed in their usual blacks and reds, and even danced with his youngest brother, fourteen-year-old Prince Henrik who was just as dramatic as Enzo said; he spent the entirety of their waltz gazing at her with adoring eyes and comparing her beauty to that of a goddess and then kissed her hand multiple times before he released her to dance a quadrille with Matt. 

The end of the night approached rapidly as she tried to hide her disappointment at his absence, but like with the late-arriving dress, just when she had accepted that he would not be there, suddenly he was, standing by the terrace door, dressed in his customary black. The Northern crown suited him, uniform obsidian spikes that rose up all around and made his face all the more imposing. 

He did not approach her, but this was no deterrent. She had not gotten where she was now by standing around and waiting for things to happen. She picked up her skirts and strode purposely through the crowded ballroom to stand in front of him. 

“Your Majesty,” he said, inclining his head, and she was surprised to find that she wished he’d called her by her own name, instead. 

“Let’s go out to the terrace,” she stated, blunt in a way that surprised herself, too— being around him had a way of stripping her of all of her manners, she’d always found. 

He said nothing, but offered her his arm like a gentleman, which she took and was pleased to find it still as overwarm as ever. 

The terrace in the moonlight (the  _ starlight,  _ she thought, flushing, as she took in the avid way he suddenly looked at her from the corner of his eye, restrained passion in every line of his face) gave a beautiful view of the surrounding grounds, the gardens lightly frosted in the late-autumn night and the not-so-far-away ocean glittering in the distance. As a child, she’d always wished that the ocean was just a  _ little  _ closer, so they could hear the waves roaring. 

“How have you been? Since Finn, I mean.” She asked, realizing the forward nature of her question only after it was too late to recall it from the air. She didn’t know what had possessed her to ask such a thing, as if they were sheepherders in the hills and not a queen and a king of neighboring lands. 

_ “For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground/and tell sad stories about the death of kings.”  _ Klaus quoted wryly as his answer, in a way that made it clear how  _ little  _ he wanted to discuss his eldest brother’s death. 

“ _Klaus,_ ” she began, embarrassed, but allowed him to pull her closer as an interruption-- they were on the terrace, after all, and no one could see them from the ballroom, cloaked as they were by darkness. His left hand was as warm as ever on her lower back and he steered them in aimless circles, slow steps that belonged on no popular dance’s figure diagram. His scent had somehow become familiar to her in the years they’d known each other, and she rested her head on his shoulder, breathing it in. She felt calmer than she had in months-- running a kingdom was frenetic, and though she’d expected it to become _less_ so, it had been two full years of scrambling to be prepared for meetings and events and to be informed on everything from crops to soldiers to trading. Caroline was as exhausted tonight as she was the first night she’d worn her mother’s crown upon her head. 

Klaus, on the other hand, was rigid; she smoothed her free hand over his chest and kept her face tucked into his doublet, too relieved at being finally relaxed to worry overmuch about what was wrong. 

“I was thinking of having another ball in the Spring,” she murmured, to fill the now-easy silence between them, drowsy in the moonlight as they danced to the faint strains of the music being played inside, “you should bring your sister, when you come-- I was thinking of how she’d like Matt, you know, my Captain of the Guard, Captain Donovan--” 

“I can’t, love,” he murmured, and in such an agonized way that she went immediately to draw back from him, to look him in the face, and found she was unable to, with his hand on her back keeping her pressed to his chest. 

“Why not?” She demanded, in a tone harsher than she meant, because he had never denied her anything before— she had never  _ asked  _ for anything before, he had always given freely to her what was his to give. Rejection, denial, felt like a slap. 

“Because, I have a kingdom to run,” he said, evenly, tone cool as if he was trying to convince both of them of what he was saying. “I should not have sent the army to your aid. I could have lost control of the country for that. I should not have supported you as wholly as I did—“ 

“ _ Then why did you _ ?” Caroline snarled, tearing herself from his arms to look up at him, feeling all of a sudden as if she might start to cry. She hadn’t cried in  _ years.  _ Caroline Forbes didn’t  _ cry _ . She  _ raged.  _ No one but her mother had ever made her cry, and she would not add another name to that list. Especially not  _ Klaus Mikaelson’s.  _ “Why did you send them, why did you send me the dress tonight if you didn’t—“ she couldn’t finish, couldn’t say anything else that would strip her of the last vestiges of her pride, as well as her plausible deniability. 

“Because I am selfish,” Klaus growled, snatching her upper arms and  _ dragging  _ her back in until they were nose to nose, until everything was Klaus and his burning eyes and his soft-looking mouth and his  _ fury  _ and his  _ sadness.  _ “Because I am a selfish killer, because I am a bastard, because I have no right to the Northern throne except that which I have made for myself, and I will not lose it just to chase after a woman who I will never have!” 

Caroline’s head spun at this new information, and yet one thing stood clearly out to her. 

“What,” she began, licking her lips nervously, gathering courage, “makes you think that you’ll never have me?” She’d never heard a man speak like that before— not a titled man, at least, a man of high birth. Never heard such a man act as if there were any woman he could not possess, or catch. Tyler Lockwood had pressed his suit of her confidently; he had spoken as if their engagement was already set in stone, as if  _ asking  _ was a minor afterthought. Her other suitors had been the same. 

“You can’t love me.” Klaus stated, low and harsh and  _ agonized,  _ and Caroline shook off his suddenly-limp grip of her to press her hands gently to the sides of his face, brushing her thumbs over those high cheekbones she’d so admired when they first met. 

“You know,” she said, slowly, a smile starting to grace her face like rising dawn, “whenever anyone tells me I can’t do something, I prove them wrong.” 

Klaus went utterly still, eyes searching her face, and then he laughed, the sound a little strangled, a little unpracticed, and as she dragged him down to kiss him she thought that it was okay he was a little unused to joy. They had lots of time to practice, after all. 

Their whole lives, even. 


End file.
